Critical Media Lab
Team Advisor/PI
Project Description/ Research Team Goals
The Program in Media Studies also oversees the Critical Media Lab, which serves as the research arm of the program. Each year, the Media Studies Steering Committee solicits and reviews applications from faculty to lead an applied research project of their design, to be conducted over the course of an academic semester with students enrolled in MDIA 401: Critical Media Lab, with support from a pre-doctoral graduate student fellow. The course operates, as the name suggests, as a lab: the students, predoctoral fellow, and professor work together to research a media problem and to produce and disseminate new scholarship, whether in the form of articles, podcasts, or video. Depending on student demand, the lab typically runs two projects each year, one per academic semester. Topics include the empirical study of how representations of climate change affect audience perceptions and how media genres adapt to new constellations of activist discourse.
Issues Addressed
Media bias; how media representation impacts social justice; how popular culture shapes social and political attitudes; the relation between social media and activism
Research Methods and Technology
Methods vary depending on each semester's designated project, but usually involve a combination of close humanistic analysis (interpreting individual films or other media content) and empirical aggregation (coding trends in a large corpus of media) of contemporary content production.
Preferred Undergraduate Interests
Media studies, cinema, popular culture, Internet, social media, social justice
Academic Majors of Interest
Open to all
Prior Preparation/Requisite Experience
None required; preference will be given to students who have taken MDIA 204 or are of sophomore or higher standing
Compensation
Work study-eligible students may receive compensation from OURI.
Course Credit
MDIA 401 (Fall 2026)
Team Meeting
To be determined in Fall 2026
Actively Onboarding New Members
No; lab opens in Fall 2026
Ready to Apply?
Applications available closer to Fall 2026
Contact
For more information, please check out the lab's website or email Dr. Michael Dango (michael.dango@rice.edu).